Apps and Tools Every New Remote Worker Needs

Doesn’t matter if you’re a freelancer or in a full-time job, it is pertinent to note that more and more of us are getting the opportunity to work remotely these days. But while working from home, a cafe, or even a bar is awesome, some things can be difficulty to manage when you’re not physically close to your colleagues.

Thankfully, to avert this challenge a ton of apps are made available, much of it free are here to bridge the gap and make our remote live easier. In this article we have listed the best to tool and apps for working remotely yet closer to our colleague.

And these tools and app are grouped in categories.

Team Chat

Workplace by Facebook
Facebook launched a team collaboration platform that includes messaging, voice and video calling, and newsfeed features to help teams work together more efficiently.

HipChat
HipChat is another great chat tool from the folks at Atlassian. If your team uses Jira or other Atlassian products, adding Hipchat to the mix will streamline your life like whoa.

Slack
Slack is more than a tool for chatting—it’s almost a religion. If the hilarious gifs and useful chatbots don’t hook you, the endless array of integrations that will cut down on your emails most certainly will.

Meetings & Video Chat

Google Hangouts
Google Hangouts is the default tool of choice for video meetings. Slack even lets you launch a hangout right from within a channel!

Zoom
An alternative to Hangouts, Zoom has a higher threshold for the number of people who can be in a meeting at once.

Youtube Live
Need to record a quick video? How about host a live broadcast or training for your team? YouTube Live is Google Hangout’s alternative to scaling a broadcast globally.

Join.me
Great app for screen sharing and team calls. It doesn’t freeze up as often as other tools do which makes it a great choice for quick meetings on the fly.

Project Management

Asana
Project and task management abound in Asana, which works well for remote teams because of all the options available to manage and track tasks.

Float
Float is a great tool for team resource and project tracking. It’s simple to use and customizable depending on your client billing structure. Great for smaller teams!

JIRA
We use JIRA heavily here at Skillcrush, managing work sprints across dev and marketing teams alike. JIRA is a pretty robust project and issue tracker. If you’re starting with a small team, try the next option on this list.

Pivotal Tracker
A simple to use agile sprint tracker that makes it easy to manage projects with clients.

Trello
Trello’s ease of use makes it not just a great tool for project and task management but also leading remote product feature prioritization sessions! It’s got a great mobile app, too.

Productivity

Todoist
Todoist manages to toe the fine line between simple enough to use quickly while still boasting a ton of customizable options.

iDoneThis
iDoneThis is an interesting tool for remote teams who want to keep tabs on each others’ progress.

Dev and Design

GitHub
This is the ultimate tool for developers to host their code online. Not a developer? GitHub is also the site of choice for many company wikis.

InVision
InVision is a great tool for building prototypes and sharing them with your team. Contextual comments make collecting feedback a snap.

Cloud9
A development environment in the cloud featuring its own code editor and an Ubuntu workspace.

Skitch
This app by Evernote allows remote teams to annotate, markup, and quickly sketch out ideas. You can get it for your desktop, tablet, and phone and get to work no matter where you are.

CodePen
Write and share HTML/CSS & JavaScript on the fly! Share with your remote team members and preview your code/get feedback in real time.

Cloud Storage & Collaboration

Box
More than just cloud storage, Box is changing how you manage content across your business from simple file sharing to building custom apps.

Google Drive
Google Drive needs no introduction. Store and collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more all with your Google Account.

Dropbox
This is the cloud storage of choice for most design and dev teams. Dropbox also recently announced Paper—a separate app similar to Google Docs that lets you collaborate in real time.